September 19th, 1901

     This is a mournful day, September 19, 1901. The sympathies and anguish of unnumbered millions of stricken hearts throughout this land and the world, proclaim it to be a mournful day. He, by whose sick bed for eight days the nation with breathless anxiety has tenderly watched every fluctuation of the pulse, every throb of the heart, is being borne to his last earthly resting place. He for whom the nation has so ardently prayed, has gone forever beyond the reach or need of our supplications. The assassin’s bullet has done its work. The nation weeps and clothes itself with sackcloth and ashes. What shall we say? What can we say while weeping in the amazement and bewilderment of our grief, but that God hath done it, and in the language of our stricken chief: “It is God’s way, His will be done.” Yes, it is the Lord’s way. His hand arrested not the arm of the assassin, no angel messenger was sent to avert the fatal shot. Known to Omniscience was the plan of the murderous assassin. Yet his providence, which could have easily prevented the fatal result averted it not. “Is there evil in the city, and the Lord hath not done it?” A holy and righteous God allowed it for His own wise and holy ends. What remains for us, is to accept it and humbly and prayerfully learn and improve the lessons the sad event is calculated to teach.
     The immediate designs of God in His dealings with man are often out of sight. The wheels of His government are high and dreadful. “His path is in the great waters and His footsteps are not known.” Of this, however, we may be certain, that He has some great and glorious purpose to answer by this event. To feeble and short sighted man this calamity presents a cloud of inpenetrable [sic] darkness. But as sure as God is upon the throne, and controls the events of the universe, this cloud has a bright side, and some day its brightness will appear.
     For the future let us hope; yea, if we improve the lesson we can hope.
     May not the Lord in this calamity be dealing with us because of our sins as a nation? “I tremble,” said Thomas Jefferson, “for my country, remembering that God is just, and that his justice will not sleep forever.” What are our sins as a nation? is a timely and pertinent question. What evils exist, which this nation could, and should have put down? To one evil only do we at present call attention:

ANARCHY AND RUM.

     The Chicago “Tribune” says: “The nation’s two greatest foes are anarchy and rum. . . . Both sap the foundations of good citizenship, and if allowed to work together unchecked, will cause the downfall of the mightiest nation. . . . Rum itself is the arch Anarchist. . . .”
     At no time in the history of the nation were these words more applicable than the present. Never have we seen anarchy and rum ruling so universal as they are to-day, and as a consequence, never, we believe, was there ever a time in the history of the Republic when lawlessness was so rampant as it is to-day. We are no alarmists or pessimists, but “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” That there are foes from within, which are assaulting the foundations of freedom, and striking at the vitals of the great republic, only one who is socially, ethically, and politically blind can fail to see. And the greatest of these foes is the legalized rum traffic. It is a well known fact that this traffic thrives by trampling under foot the laws of the land, and this the police, the police commissioners, and other officers of the cities and towns know, but do not interfere.
     Consequently, the legalized rum traffic is, and ever has been, a most seductive, powerful, effective agency in schooling the people, and especially the young men of the country into disregard for and violation of the laws of the land. Is it strange then that lawlessness and the non-enforcement of law should be greatly on the increase?
     Such is the condition; such the dangerous trend just now. What is to be done? Is the country to die of anarchy? It will unless there be a general rapid return to and a conscientious regard for and vigorous enforcement of law.
     Never were the words of the immortal Lincoln more pertinent than they are to-day, when speaking of the sacredness of law. He said:
     “There is even now something of ill omen among us; I mean the disregard for law. Here then is one point at which danger may be expected. The question seems, How shall we fortify against it? The answer is simple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws of his country, and never to tolerate their violation by others.”

SCHOOL OF ANARCHISTS.

     Much is being said to-day about deporting all anarchists, and amending our Immigration laws so as to prevent the landing of anarchists upon our shores. All this so far well, but we must go further, we must by legislation close up the American saloon which is the school of anarchism, the breeding place of anarchists, where murderous deeds are hatched.
     The essential spirit of anarchy is disregard of law and of the rights of others, this is pre-eminently the spirit of the saloon, which for the greed of gold destroys manhood and womanhood, and wrecks the home, one of the bulwarks of the nation. The red flag of anarchy and the black flag of the saloon mean much the same: Violation of law and of human rights. That there is a close relation between anarchism and the saloon will be admitted if we consider a few facts. It is a significant fact that the anarchists almost invariably hold their meetings and hatch their wretched plans in saloons or in halls attached to saloons.
     As it was in the American legalized saloon that the Haymarket bomb throwers, of Chicago, concocted their murderous plot, so in the American legalized saloon Booth, the assassin of President Lincoln, and Guiteau, the assassin of President Garfield, got their inspiration, and Czolgosz, the assassin of President McKinley, was for three days prior to the awful deed harbored in an American legalized saloon at Buffalo; hence, very naturally, the police in every city in their search after anarchists first visit the saloon, and while as the outcome of this dastardly deed there may be an expulsion from the country of a few anarchistic agitators, this will not meet the demands of the situation.
     The American legalized saloon, the breeding place of anarchists, must be suppressed.